The statements in this section merely provide background information related to the present disclosure and may not constitute prior art.
Recently, global environmental contamination has become a serious issue, and thus use of clean energy is becoming more and more important day by day. Particularly, air pollution in major cities is becoming more severe day by day, and exhaust gas of a vehicle is one of main causes of the air pollution.
In order to solve the problem of exhaust gas and to reduce fuel consumption, an environmentally-friendly vehicle such as a hybrid vehicle and an electric vehicle has been developed.
The hybrid vehicle has a power generation device that includes an engine and a motor, and is driven by power that is generated by a combustion action of the engine and also power that is generated by a rotation of a motor using electrical energy that is stored in a battery.
In the hybrid vehicle, a transmission implementing a Transmission Mounted Electric Device method (TMED) that connects a driving motor and a transmission is generally used.
In the hybrid vehicle, as a device to transfer power of the engine to a driving shaft, an engine clutch is mounted between the engine and the driving motor.
The hybrid vehicle provides an Electric Vehicle (EV) mode that provides running of the vehicle with a torque of only a driving motor and a Hybrid Electric Vehicle (HEV) mode that provides running of the vehicle with the sum of an engine torque and a driving motor torque according to whether coupling of the engine clutch occurs.
When a trailer is mounted in the hybrid vehicle, an inertial load of the vehicle is increased and it is difficult to manage SOC (State Of Charge) of a battery. Therefore, a driving performance, a climbing performance and fuel consumption are deteriorated.
Accordingly, whether the trailer is mounted or not is one of important factors to precisely control the vehicle.
According to the conventional art, a dedicated cable of the trailer has been used to determine that the trailer is mounted or not. However, if a driver does not mount the dedicated cable of the trailer or use it, it is difficult to exactly determine whether the trailer is mounted.